This invention tracks the vehicle traveling on the toll road by multiple reading and automatically charges customer without needing their intervention. That is very different than the current solution used where there are one or two checkpoints to identify vehicle going on a toll road.
As the cost of building and operating of a toll booth is high, tendency is to do with one toll booth unless the toll is very long. This leads drivers to pay more tolls for the road they are not using.
This invention relates to the problem of toll payment, when a user is passing through toll road using vehicle and has to wait for collection of toll ticket manually and give the appropriate payment manually. In order to reduce the time and labor of a user and a toll collector, the present invention deals with the use of geo location enabled devices like smart phone, laptop, palmtop etc. to do the toll road payment electronically using said devices.
So far some of the inventions which try to resolve the same problem by using different means includes as per below:
DE 102004035985 A1 discloses the method involves locating a mobile radio station (3) in the motor vehicle with at least one master station (2) of the portable radio net suitable for locating mobile radio stations. As soon as the mobile radio station is in range (5) of an approach (6) or exit (7) of the road system a data record associated with the mobile radio is compared with entries in a computer of the mobile station or connected to the portable radio net. Corresponding data records of mobile radio stations assigned to motor vehicles are stored in the data base. As soon as the data record is found a charge counter assigned to the mobile radio station and/or the motor vehicle is started or continued with automatic logging of an identification code of the approach or exit. A traveled distance, bridged distance and/or utilization period is determined by evaluating as user approaches and exits. A fee is computed depending on the distance and/or utilization period.
JP2001243513 (A) describes the method and device for automatic payment of toll highway fare using cellular phone. The use of this device includes a cellular phone which is prepared in a vehicle and registers the information specifying a telephone set and the settlement method of toll highway fare corresponding to the telephone specification information at the toll highway fare management side, an entrance/exit controller which receives the specification information on the cellular phone and transmits this received information and the entering/leaving points of toll highways to the toll highway fare management side and a controller which is placed at the toll highway fare management side to calculate the toll highway fares of vehicles carrying cellular phones from the specification information and toll highway entering/leaving points information sent from the entrance/exit controller and to charge the toll highway fares to each settlement institution according to the registered settlement method. In such a constitution, the toll highway fare can be automatically paid by means a cellular phone and a base station antenna of the cellular phone and with no use of an IC card nor a private radio unit.
JP2007034645 (A) discloses a mobile station equipment of automated toll-payment system, wherein the mobile station equipment of an automated toll-payment system is provided with a wireless communication means for communicating with a base station installed on a road, an automated toll-payment processing means which executes processing relating to the payment of a toll of a toll road through the wireless communication means, and at least a second application processing means as a means used in uses except the payment of a toll of a toll road. In this case, the mobile station equipment is provided with an application selection means for determining whether the automated toll-payment processing means or the second application processing means is to be operated, and operates not to communicate with a base station ready for an application, to which prohibition is set when an operation-prohibition setting is made by the application selection means.
KR20040066398 (A) provides an invention of GPS mobile telephone system having function of settling toll road, in which a GPS (Global Positioning System) mobile telephone has a function of settling a toll road based on position information. A mobile telephone settling system receives the position information of the GPS mobile telephone. The mobile telephone settling system reads vehicle road information corresponding to the position information of the GPS mobile telephone from a vehicle road database. The mobile telephone settling system reads a corresponding vehicle number from a vehicle number database remembering a GPS mobile telephone number and a vehicle number for demanding payment to the mobile telephone number.
Though all above mentioned inventions describes the use of mobile phone or mobile station equipment like devices to track tolls but either it requires some apparatus to be placed in the vehicle or required camera to get the license plate or entrance and/or exit controllers or similar system on the toll booth. All such type of inventions solves the problem of time consumption and labor done by the user and toll collector by using mobile based system.
But all these prior art did not address the objective of reduction in cost of establishing toll booth collecting system. Also, these systems designed to take readings when vehicle enters the toll booth compared to our solution which looks at complete holistic solution with multiple readings at different times while vehicle is travelling on the toll road—effectively taking readings at different locations.
The difference in the present invention versus the existing solution becomes non-obvious for the use case for example, if vehicle by mistake enters into the toll road and it turns around in few meters. In the existing solutions, the person at toll booth has to reverse the transaction manually and if the person at toll booth cannot do it—then vehicle driver has to pay the toll. While in the present invention, vehicle driver would not be even charged based on the business defined that says that vehicles travelling less than x % on toll road would not be charged. Or if the vehicle returned back within a small distance without crossing to other side, should not be charged.
The present invention deals with providing a system wherein when the user start the application from his geo-location enabled device such as smart phone or laptop or such kind of devices, it sends the message to centralized server, which takes record of the time of vehicle entry on the toll road and determine when it exited from the road and calculate the total charges of toll fees depending on the rate of toll fee prevailing in that geo-location.
Users can do the payment by mobile or net banking or by credit card, which can be recorded in real time by centralized server and acknowledgement of the paid receipt will be sent in real time. This invention requires no special instrument or device to be placed either on the toll road or in the car and hence reduces the cost of installment and maintenance of such devices and also reduce the expenditure on human resources required to monitor the toll road.